Clearly it must also have some guarantees re: backup and export, so all the work of people adding knowledge and stories to old (and not so old) pictures can't vanish with 30days notice. - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Currently have a flickr account but that is too flat, not easy enough to organise, relate pictures. Webshots is the same, although it does offer backup which is a plus, and has a desktop client, and has existed since 1999 or longer which is interesting (have an account since 2000 which means a credit of 15000 picture hosting). Was considering using 72photos, as that was clean and simple, but it seems to be dying, or at least things are breaking and not being fixed. So looking at new options - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

It takes a lot of time to upload images and organize them to test a site, so hoping for feedback from people who have already done it - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

option 1 - a lot of the "printing" focused companies have album features and family-connecting features. I never tried any but if anyone uses one as a co-site i would be interested to hear. Or if you work for one, do suggest it, no fear :) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

option 2 - looking at http://www.expono.com/ looks ambitious. Interesting features are the facetagging, geotagging, organization and relationship options, editing of meta information and it claims sophisticated groups and permissions so perhaps I can let a select group change meta information (no backup/re-download newly tagged photos that I could tell). I have not tried it, this is all based on reading their own blurb. - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

option 3 - phanphare http://www.phanfare.com/. Interesting features here are the dropbox (so others can add pictures that belong in a collection), backup, desktop client (although i use and like acdsee) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

option 4 - ipernity http://www.ipernity.com/ they dont describe the features much but just looking at the resulting image blogs it might be quite interesting to organise. It's more like a bloggier flickr, and multi lingual - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

option 5 - dropshots http://www.dropshots.com/ Simpler looking but seems quite good at organizing. And simpler might be better to get certain people to use it - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Would love to hear if anyone uses any of these and can tell me what's good etc :) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

especially ipernity and expono - any users? - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

If you prefer self-hosting, Gallery 3 looks like it is going to be a great tool. Gallery 2 suffered the second system effect, but Gallery 3 is the product of a very experienced team loaded with hindsight. The beta 3 has been out last month and it is already very usable. My only gripe against Gallery is that it lacks integration into social networks - but that is nothing that can't be fixed using plugins. http://gallery.menalto.com/gallery... - Jean-Marc Liotier

I dont need the integration into social networks as much as the building of a small network - I am hoping to build something that makes it easy for people to upload the bits of history they have and perhaps help fill in the blanks for each other - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Joelle, I created the exception to your rule: "It takes a lot of time to upload images and organize them to test a site." Just use a few hundred images taken with phones or digital cameras and try out OurDoings. They're organized as soon as you upload them. All you do is click calendar icons then "Edit" to add a story to go with a group of pictures. (They're initially grouped by the day they were taken.) You can know in 20 minutes if it's for you: http://ourdoings.com/ - Bruce Lewis

Hi Bruce - just spotted your post, will give it a try! - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

Great! - Bruce Lewis

signed up today - nice set of upload options (cant upload now, would interfere with R's WoW raid) - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

lists of bigger sites - http://photoEditors.nexo.com - http://photoSocials.nexo.com - Petr Buben

ever tried http://www.smugmug.com/ ? - A.T.

+ http://friendfeed.com/donmaca... - A.T.

smugmug is very nice but not what i am looking for in this very particular case: a version where you can let a group of others add bits of information - dates, places etc. on old photos - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

might be a long shot, but have you ever heard of This Moment? http://www.thismoment.com probably not the typical photo site you had in mind at first, but with an interesting concept that would allow your family and friends to easily add photos, videos and text to your moments/stories. - denise

Got some bookmarks from this thread. - TrafficBug

Have you tried snapfish? Friends can add their photos to yours. - m9m, Crone of FriendFeed